Booze Free January: 2 Weeks In

Published January 17, 2017

It’s been two weeks since I started my Booze-Free January challenge, and this week has been more successful than the last (not to mean I drank last week and not this week – I haven’t had a drop since I started!) for a couple of reasons.

Last Friday, Anna and I went out to a bar in Echo Park with a couple of friends of hers who were visiting from New York. I’m a little ashamed to say that around 9 PM when we left home to meet them, we were both feeling very tired and not that excited about a night out. But, we put our pants on and even put on a little makeup and headed out.

I was the DD, which was a stress-free decision and actually really nice. We got to the bar and met her friends, and proceeded to have a nice time carousing (I drank Topo Chico and canned cold brew coffee !!) until 2 AM! If you know me and my grandma habits, this is pretty remarkable. I have trouble staying up until 2 even at my most party-ready, tipsy moments. We did it team!

The next day I realized that I felt really good about that night because I didn’t feel that I had made a fool of myself at all. Let me explain. I’m an introvert, and while I enjoy meeting new people, it always stresses me out a little bit. I often drink a little more than I should to compensate for this, but it frequently backfires in two ways:

That night, I remember clearly all of my conversations with these new people, and they were fun, pleasant, and not full of me saying dumb things at high volumes. I told Anna this and she told me, “You really don’t usually make a fool of yourself.”

That may be true, but I always feel like I do, and this time I didn’t. Hooray!

Reason number two that this has been an especially good week for the challenge: I lost 2 pounds! I don’t feel like I’m super overweight by any means, but I do feel like I’m carrying around some extra flab that might be mostly the result of too much sugary wine. Well folks, I stepped on the scale this weekend to discover that I’m 2 pounds lighter than when I started the challenge. My wine belly is (sort of) going away.

I continue to be able to sleep very well at night, and wake up feeling pretty perky. For example it’s 6 AM right now and I’ve been up since 5:15 and I am buzzing (it might be the coffee…)